Big fine:  Soul Food in Narromine. Pic: Yelp.

By Danielle Bowling 

A restaurant in regional NSW will back-pay more than $22,000 to 24 workers – including teenagers paid as little as $7 per hour –  following an audit by the Fair Work Ombudsman.

Fair Work Ombudsman inspectors discovered the underpayments at Soul Food in Narromine, during an auditing campaign in the mid-western and northern regions of NSW last year.

Inspectors found casual staff were paid between $7 and $20 an hour on weekdays and between $7 and $23 an hour on Saturdays, depending on their age.

However, under the Restaurant Industry Award 2010 at the time, the workers should have received ordinary hourly rates of between $11.06 and $22.76 on weekdays, and between $13.76 and $27.32 on Saturdays.

Read more here.

This story first appeared in Hospitality Magazine.